CHARLESTON — High above the congested traffic on Kanawha Boulevard across the river from the state Capitol, Scott Pauley helps manage a team of eight intelligence analysts constantly searching for the next potential threat.

Pauley is deputy director of the West Virginia Intelligence/Fusion Center located inside the old Columbia Gas Building in Charleston.

The highly secure facility is a single point of contact that allows information to flow —whether it’s from the federal level or what Pauley calls the “boots on the ground.”

“These are the police officers, local law enforcement and the everyday folks out developing cases,” Pauley said.

Fusion centers were born from the ashes of 9/11, charged with a mission to bring the national security and intelligence-gathering mentality to local law enforcement.

The West Virginia facility is one of 79 across the nation, with bigger states like California and Texas having multiple centers.

“We saw a bigger use for it here in West Virginia,” he said. “We fall under the ‘all crimes all hazards banner’ meaning we will help all law enforcement in murder cases, if there are terrorism cases, cyber related cases, a fraud case or even a local drug gang issue.”

An example of the mission Pauley explained took place last year. He said in 2017 there were a high number of local school bomb threats across the state. He explained that during any given situation his intelligence analysts would deal with many different levels of law enforcement up to the FBI.

“That’s why it’s very good for us to have those working relationships with all those agencies,” Pauley said.

The staff working at the Fusion/Intelligence Center also help when disaster strikes. Pauley said his team played a critical role during the devastating floods in 2016.

“When a natural disaster hits, we really rely on whatever information people can give us, whether that’s through the internet or the telephone,” Griffith said. “They send in that real-time information, we compile it into a report and we get it to the Emergency Operations Center for the state or we get it to the National Guard so they can get the resources out to help people.”

Receiving the critical, threat or sometimes life and death information is the core responsibility of the Fusion Center. Working to accomplish this is Supervisory Analyst and Fusion Liaison Officer Coordinator Jessica L. Griffith. On a daily basis, Griffith and the intelligence analyst staff work with Fusion Liaison Officers or “FLOs” are the literally the eyes and ears within their communities who report suspicious activity.

“They’re also responsible for getting information from us that we’re distributing out and sending it to the people in their agencies,” she said.

Griffith said there are 209 FLOs working in nearly every community across the state having a law enforcement, emergency services or other community-oriented background. They serve as the main point of contact for their agency, communicating with the Fusion center in matters related to suspicious activity. The idea, Griffith explained, is to provide extra help through intelligence to small, short staffed police departments struggling to keep their communities safe.

“That’s the purpose of the FLO program,” she said. “To enhance the mission of the Fusion center, to enhance communication and to be a force multiplier for those smaller agencies who may not have the resources.”

The program’s success has not gone unnoticed. Pauley said Griffith’s FLO program was recognized in 2017 for training by the Department of Homeland Security as one of the best training programs in the nation.

“We’re doing great things here, and we have great people,” Griffith said. “The people in our FLO program are there to protect the people in their communities and the state as a whole.”

Always working to set a higher standard and stay ahead of the bad guys, Griffith said the West Virginia center is only the second in the nation to utilize and promote the use of the Suspicious Activity Reporting mobile app.

“That’s our front line,” Pauley said of the app. “You don’t have to be a police officer. If you see something and your gut tells you it’s not right, then there’s a good chance something is wrong.”

In hopes of getting more people providing information by way of the mobile app, Griffith said Intelligence Analyst Steven Patterson developed a QR code, designed to automatically take a person to the Suspicious Activity Report app for both Apple or Android devices.

“It’s a very fast way for people to get us information if they do see something,” Patterson said.

NCWV Media Business Editor John Dahlia can be reached at 304-276-1801 or by email at jdahlia@ncwvmedia.com.

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